EOS Utility recognizes the camera only sporadically. When I connect it Windows opens the camera page from Devices in the Control Panel, and there is memory usage, battery charge etc. However, when I start EOS Utility, it does not offer any camera related options, only "Monitor Folder" is enabled. I have now tried connecting it with the original cable to each of the 12 USB ports I have on my computer, without any success. Sometimes upon connecting it, it just works, but most of the time it won't. I have also tried running Utility as admin, no difference.

Have you tried this on something other then windows 8? I don't know if EOS utility supports windows 8 yet.
– dpollittSep 10 '12 at 19:14

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Agree with @dpollitt. Windows 8 is pre-release at the moment, and Canon in my experience have always been late with updates. On the Mac side of things too. I would use a Windows 7 machine for now until Windows 8 is out and the Canon software has officially been updated to support it.
– MikeSep 12 '12 at 14:16

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It seems to me that it is more probably related to usb driver for camera and software inside a camera than Canon EOS Utility itself.
– Goran ObradovicSep 12 '12 at 19:16

10 Answers
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After updating all my Canon software, EOS utility did not recognize my EOS 7D. After hours of uninstalling and installing German and English old and new versions of EOS utility and reinstalling the camera driver I found FAQ-ID 8201597200 on the canon website.

I uninstalled all CameraWindow Programs and EOS Utility, restarted the computer, installed EOS Utility and it worked again.

This is more a workaround or side effect than a real answer, but since I installed Magic Lantern to camera, I could not reproduce this issue anymore (I had a dozen of connections since). Probably counts as a possible solution.

UPDATE 1 - Another workaround: Disconnect camera, take a few shots (1-3), connect, try again. I discovered this by accident but it seems to be good enough workaround until real solution is available.

After landed on this page some time ago and tried the above solutions and many others, I return with the one that finally worked (Taken from photography-on-the.net forum):

In Device Manager, do you see any other devices other than your camera under "Portable Devices"? Under mine, I have listed 4 removable media drives "SD, CF, etc.) that corresponded to my All-in-one Internal USB2.0 connector Card Reader. Each slot is shown as a drive letter. I disabled all four drives by right clicking each one and choosing "Disable" Once that was complete I plugged the camera back in and started the Eos Utility. Camera was now fully recognized. I can still use the media slots even with each drive being disabled.

It is not about Windows 8 being RC because I have the final version, not about having Magic Lantern installed because I don't, you do need the latest version of EOS Utility 2.12.

BTW, to install EOS utility you don't really need the original CD, just make a registry entry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\EOS Utility] for 32 bit Windows or
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\EOS Utility] for 64bit
then run the update utility. Same goes for all Canon software.

I don't have any other portable devices on desktop, and while I had win 7 in dual boot it worked in 7 and not in 8 :) So, it seems that there are a lot of different things that cause this.
– Goran ObradovicNov 28 '12 at 6:47

Thanks, and welcome to Stack Exchange. A link to your blog is helpful, but we also prefer to have a quick summary of the solution right here. (First, because blogs come and go, and second, because it's nicer for people looking for solutions to their problems to just get the answer directly.)
– mattdmJan 5 '13 at 13:26

I tried updating the eos utility and am still having issues but I am using the t4i
– runxc1 Bret FerrierJan 10 '13 at 3:57

If you can, borrow a friend's DSLR and connect it to your Win-8 PC with the same USB cable

Other combinations

See which component is constantly associated with a failure. Then you will be able to identify what exactly is causing the problem, it might be the OS, it might be a loose cable, it might be your camera, or some sort of combo. (for example Win 8 just hates the USB cable you use, while Win 7 is okay with it. Hey, its Microsoft....)

Finally I suspect that the cause is Windows 8 not having the driver for 550D ready either internally or via Windows Update or whatever they call their driver search service. I am a programmer but this is just a guess, I just don't think Win 8 is production-ready at the moment.

It recurred 2 days ago to me. I connected camera to win 8 (final) and EOS Utility did not recognize it. I tried turning off&on, no go. Next morning, I just pressed shutter button to turn the camera on, and it worked. Since the moment when it was not working computer was not restarted, camera was not moved, neither the cable, so only thing that happened is camera turned off itself (power saver) and 10-11 hours later I turned it back on :)
– Goran ObradovicDec 10 '12 at 6:50

Excuse me but my English is poor...
To solve this problem, I tried to reprogram my USB port. I downloaded a little software that allows to know which device was in the memory of each USB port. I deleted all the Canon entries, then turned on my 7D and... It works! The sort is nonocleanusb.